Epitaph

Thomas Stagg's epitaph in St. Giles Churchyard, London

That is all

In a Thrumont, Md., cemetery

Here lies an Athiest
All dressed up
And no place to go

In a Larne, Ireland, cemetery epitaph of a man who had been hanged

Rab McBeth
Who died for the want
of another breath

Gravedigger Robert Phillip's epitaph, England

Here I lie at the Chancel door;
Here I lie because I am poor;
The farther in the more you pay;
Here I lie as warm as they.

In the Boot Hill Cemetery, Arizona

Here lies
Lester Moore
Four slugs
From a fourty-four
No Les
No More

In a New Mexico cemetery

Here lies
Johnny Yeast
Pardon me
For not rising

An attorney's epitaph in Rockford, Illinois

Goembel
John E.
1867-1946
"The defense rests"

A lawyer's epitaph in England

Sir John Strange
Here lies an honest lawyer,
And that is Strange.

In a cemetery in Scotland

Here beneath this stone we lie
Back to back my wife and I
And when the angels trump shall trill
If she gets up then I'll lie still!

In a North Carolina cemetery

Come blooming youths, as you pass by
And on these lines do cast an eye
As you are now, so once was I;
As I am now, so must you be;
Prepare for death and follow me.

To which someone, who saw this, added

To follow you
I am not content
How do I know
Which way you went

An epitaph is an engraved message on a tombstone (the stone marker, not the frozen pizza). Generally, an epitaph would list the years of your birth and death, your name, and occasionally a message. In Fallout 2 you can see some humorous ones. "Here lies Ed Wood, one wood within another. The outer wood is very good, I can't vouch for the other."

The Epitaph is also the paper in Tombstone, Arizona.

Epitaph
by Robert Desnos

I lived in those times. For a thousand years
I have been dead. Not fallen, but hunted;
When all human decency was imprisoned,
I was free amongst the masked slaves.

I lived in those times, yet I was free.
I watched the river, the earth, the sky,
Turning around me, keeping their balance,
The seasons provided their birds and their honey.

You who live, what have you made of your luck?
Do you regret the time when I struggled?
Have you cultivated for the common harvest?
Have you enriched the town I lived in?

Living men, think nothing of me. I am dead.
Nothing survives of my spirit or my body.

Sour Grapes (1921)
by
William Carlos Williams

Epitaph

An old willow with hollow branches
slowly swayed his few high gright tendrils
and sang:

Love is a young green willow
shimmering at the bare wood's edge.

Sources:

Public domain text taken from The Poets’ Corner:
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/wcw-sg2.html#30

Ep"i*taph (?), n. [F. 'epitaphe, L. epitaphium a funeral oration, fr. Gr. , orig. an adj., over or at a tomb; upon + tomb. Cf. Cenotaph.]

1.

An inscription on, or at, a tomb, or a grave, in memory or commendation of the one buried there; a sepulchral inscription.

Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb. Shak.

2.

A brief writing formed as if to be inscribed on a monument, as that concerning Alexander: "Sufficit huic tumulus, cui non sufficeret orbis."

 

© Webster 1913.

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Ep"i*taph, v. t.

To commemorate by an epitaph.

[R.]

Let me be epitaphed the inventor of English hexameters. G. Harvey.

 

© Webster 1913.

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Ep"i*taph, v. i.

To write or speak after the manner of an epitaph.

[R.]

The common in their speeches epitaph upon him . . . "He lived as a wolf and died as a dog." Bp. Hall.

 

© Webster 1913.